Unprepared for BP Spill

A report by the presidential spill commission says that both the oil industry and the government were ill-prepared for the Deepwater Horizon blowout and the spill that resulted in the Gulf of Mexico earlier this year. The report also says that although oil companies and government agencies have learned plenty of valuable lessons from the Gulf of Mexico spill, we’re still nowhere close to being prepared to handle another spill of that magnitude.

The report also confirms that Oil and gasoline companies making billions of dollars of profits from drilling efforts, spend only a miniscule amount of money on preventing or controlling the damage from a spill.
The report also has criticism for the government, which it says neglected to provide adequate resources to prepare for a major offshore accident. There were inadequate manpower, financial and technological resources provided to prepare for a devastating incident like this. As a result, the Minerals Management Services and other government agencies were left completely unprepared and confused in the first few days after the spill.

Since the spill, the Minerals Management Services is now called the Bureau of Offshore Energy Management.